Euroleague ended with the triumph of Barcelona

Catalonians off with the second title

The most pleasant surprise - Partizan's placement to the Final Four. The black-white team has in previous two years lost in quarterfinals and they lost a couple of key players before the beginning of this season. Because of this, they were given little chances and it was considered that they even can't make it to the TOP 16. The biggest disappointment of the season - Panathinaikos


By RADOMIR ĐUROVIĆ (radomir.djurovic@wavemagazine.net)
from Belgrade, SERBIA
Translation: MILENA OTAŠEVIĆ


One more season of basketball Euroleague ended with the final game between Barcelona and Olympiacos. In the Parisian sports hall "Bercy" Barcelona won with the score 86:68 and became the champion of Europe for the second time. MVP was Barcelona's playmaker Juan Carlos Navarro and this is his second time in a row to be proclaimed the best player of Euroleague and the fourth time he is a part of the best team. Third place went to CSKA from Moscow which defeated Belgrade's Partizan by 90:88 after overtime.

Same as last year, the semifinal match was between Barcelona and CSKA. Twelve months ago the Moscow team won and went to the finals (they lost that game against Panathinaikos) and now this is Barcelona's revenge. Maybe the key to Barcelona's success lays in the fact that now they have among themselves two basketball players who were last year members of CSKA - American Terence Morris and Slovenian Erazem Lorbek.

Barcelona prepared very well for this season. A big budget enabled them to have excellent European players in their team. Apart from the already mentioned Lorbek, they have his countryman Jaka Lakovič. The core of the team are several Spanish players who have won the title for the first time last year on the European championship in Poland. All of them are lead by Navaro along with the captain Roger Grimau, Ricky Rubio and Fran Vasquez. Boniface Ndong from Senegal is the third man from Africa who became the champion of Europe. Before him those who succeeded were Marc Mbai and Richard Dacoury from The Ivory Coast who were European champions with Limoges in 1993.

Olympiacos has lost its third final and only won the title in 1997. The Greek team is also a gathering of excellent individuals. Apart from several Greek national team members (Papaloukas, Bourousis, Vasilopoulos, Scortsanitis…) there are Croat Vujčić, Lithuanian Klejza and a member of the "ideal five" at the last years European championship - Miloš Teodosić. Teodosić is not the only player in Olympiacos who played in Serbia. American Scoonie Penn wore the dress of the Red Star in 2002.

The most pleasant surprise of the Euroleague was Partizan's placement on the Final Four. The black-white team has in previous two years lost in quarterfinals and they lost a couple of key players before the beginning of this season. This summer Milenko Topić, Uroš Tripković, Novica Veličković and Stefon Lasme left Partizan. Because of this, they were given little chances and it was considered that they even can't make it to the TOP 16. Still, even though they have one of the smallest budgets of all participants of Euroleague, the black-and-white team brought reinforcements wisely.

From Red Star they got Lawrence Roberts, from Granada they got an Australian of Serbian descent Aleks Marić, from Turkey Lester McCalebb, from Panathinaikos they got Dušan Kecman back. It was exactly Kecman and McCalebb that proved to be the biggest reinforcements. The Australian shone through from the first moment and if he hadn't gotten injured he would have performed even better. McCalebb came to Partizan just few days before the first match against Unicaja and instantly demonstrated that he is Partizan's ace from the sleeve. He almost immediately adjusted to the new environment and lead the team till the final tournament. Also, a great move was bringing Kecman from the team who was European champion until yesterday. With his 3-point-shots he gave additional confidence to the black-and-white team. Everyone will especially remember his shot from the final of NLB League in the last second and from the middle of the court. They came to Paris as outsiders and still they gave a decent resistance and placed fourth after losing both games in overtime.

The biggest disappointment of the season was Panathinaikos, Athens. The last years champion was one of the candidates for the final four but they didn't make it more than the second phase of the competition. In the TOP 16 phase of the competition they were in the group with Partizan, Marousi and Barcelona but they were off with a bad start by losing the first three games. They won only two games till the end but that was not enough for the quarterfinals.



(Published: 10.05.2010.)